The role of IP Engineers: The way to Unlock the Hidden Treasure

Written By: Vipin Kumar

Registered Patent Agent 

This blog post will let you know the importance of IP and the work force behind it. The post provides information and recommendations on establishing IP Department in tech based companies. It also provides information on tradesecret and patenting strategies which may keep the companies ahead in the market from other players. 

Domain specific knowledge acquisition: The IP Engineers should be trained in domain specific searches. They should be aligned towards developing robust search strings for specific tech area in order to develop higher level of thinking. The IP Engineers duty should be to analyze the search results and share the findings with the concerned tech departments. The tech departments in turn should share and brain storm their ideas with IP Engineers. The whole process should be properly documented. IP Engineers should maintain their diaries where they should be recording the valuable insights gained from tech Departments and analysis carried out on prior art found. The IP Engineers should be made part of the invention by mentioning their name in patent document as an inventor. This will provide a solid boost and motivation to them for working in their respective domain areas. The brain storming and diffusion of ideas between IP Engineers and tech departments should be finally tied to a goal where they should be delivering tangible output in the form of well documented repositories and labeled as secret and confidential documents. These documents should be kept in safe custody of the organization, because it may contain valuable IP which can be commercialized at the time entering a market segment. These incremental innovations can also be embedded in the products when they reach their tech maturity  level in the market in order to reap the benefits of exclusive market positioning and commercial scale productions.  The goal of IP Department should be to develop and identify commercial scale ideas and utilize them either as a trade secret or patents. The patent documents can be further filed in geographies where the technology has huge potential to be commercialized. The IP Department and the Marketing Department needs to be collaborated at adequate level in order to control the prosecution of patents in respective geographies. The IP Department should be providing Directions as to which patents need to be kept in force and which patents can be abandoned based on the data indications from marketing Department.

Overall the tech organizations should have a IP Research Centre where the work of advanced research and integration with latest technology should be evaluated way early than the same arrives in the market from other competitors. The IP Engineers should have domain specific acquaintance with the competitor patent and non- patent portfolio. This may help to take the decision whether the patent technology of other companies can be licensed in or not. This activity will make sure that there are no infringement related issues in the future. The utilization of patent and non-patent databases should be done in controlled manner for carrying out the daily searches and any requested landscape exercise. Directions and final approvals of the patent claims should be done, since no other department except the IP Department can understand the scope of patent claims which needs to be projected in public domain. The level of claiming should be adequately controlled in order to prevent other competitors to unearth the IP form reverse engineering. The IP Department need to keep informed the top management as to which constituents of IP can be kept as trade secrets and which needs to be approved for patenting purpose. Commercial utilization of trade secrets needs to evaluated by IP Department and further reported to the management prior to sending the IP in public domain. It is important to understand that which part of the inventions can be protected under which forms of IP Rights. Everything should not be patented as there are other types of IP Rigths like Designs, Copyright, Semiconductor layout designs which need to be kept in mind. No other Department can fully and comprehensively understand the nuances of IP work. IP Departments and the people working there are the only ones who can provide appropriate Directions in case a situations of IP Litigations on technical and legal aspects of the matter.

At the end I would like to say that IP is everywhere, we just need to identify IP in our daily life’s and should seek protection for exclusive commercialization. IP Needs to be taught at adequate level to the subject matter experts so that they are not completely bogged down towards IP work and should be carrying out implementation of ideas by building innovative products which are sustained in the market for long time. Therefore it is my personal view point that IP Departments of cells should be established in every tech organization and the IP people needs to be nurtured in domain specific areas and provided training and development for the future growth of the company. IP People can forecast where the IP of the competitors is heading in the market. IP Engineers are important resource for the country which till date is very less in number and contributing heavily to the economic development of the nation which cannot be ignored.

DISCLAIMER

Disclaimer: To understand the contents of the blog it assumes familiarity with Boolean logic and general searching for documents in patent databases. The views and ideas expressed above are of the writer of this blog. These abstract ideas may not guarantee full implementation details. Therefore, the content of this blog should be double checked by technologists and legal experts for its correctness. The writer of this blog is not liable for any loss incurred by understanding /implementing the details/content present on this blog and it cannot form any legal opinion in a court of law. The sole purpose of this blog is to make the understanding of patent related work easier in academic interest only. This Blog is written to spread awareness on Patent system of India which may help inventors to write Good quality Disclosures for their inventions. The contents of this blog are independent thought process originated in the mind of the writer which are shared here for the purpose of discussion and accumulating more clarity on patent related matters. For More information contact the author of this blog at Mob: +91-7709269318 Email:kumar.vipin1980@gmail.com